The Dreaming Hunt (74 page)

“Well, now. That changes things,” someone said.

Gunther didn't know what that pendant signified, but those in the room surely did. They were whisked down the road to the inn and the barn out back. Kuango sat inside next to the wagon, eating. Mina sat beside him, apparently keeping him company.

Gunther threw back the tarp covering the dwarven statue. “Here's our storm copper.”

An audible gasp went up.

Gabrielle spoke into the charged silence. “We were hoping you might know how to unmake this fellow and return him to life.”

The dwarves looked back and forth among themselves, and then as one said, “Magnus.”

They covered the statue, and the dwarves peered warily outside before hustling them out of the barn. They moved down the street quickly and in silence, heading beyond the village into the cloud forest.

A low, thatched-roof cottage took form in the mist, and their guides knocked furtively upon the door, nervous even out here. Gunther was alarmed when the majority of the group took up defensive positions around the cart and the house, axes and maces in hand. Did some threat lurk in the woods, or were they just that intent on the safety of the statue?

A gray-haired dwarf opened the door, hair mussed and shirt untucked. Presumably, this was Magnus. They'd obviously gotten him out of bed. He took one look at the grim faces outside his door and stepped outside as one of the dwarves gestured for the oldster to come with him.

Gunther lifted the edge of the tarp, and the dwarf sucked in a sharp breath.

Magnus muttered, “I'll get dressed and be out in a flash. Gather every able-bodied person who can be trusted. This is the greatest treasure in the realm. No harm must come to it while we take it to the forge.”

And so it was that a guard of nigh on a hundred dwarves escorted them deep into the valley. It was eerie, so many moving through the night fog with only the sound of jingling armor and the occasional scuffing of boots to announce their passing.

They walked for several hours, always gently downhill. And then, without warning, the column stopped.

“Send runners to the others,” Magnus ordered.

A half dozen young dwarves nodded and took off running into the darkness. Before long, more gray-haired dwarves rubbing sleep from their eyes joined the gathering. Magnus climbed up on a tall rock with the help of some youngsters and spoke loudly enough to be heard across the clearing.

“We've work to do, lads. Some of ye need to stand guard, and others need to gather great, galloping loads of firewood—resin-rich pine and seasoned oak. The river gates must be closed to divert the river and the great rods brought out and put in place. And fetch the hammers. It's time at long last to fire up the forge!”

A great cheer went up among the assembled dwarves.

“Master Stormcaller, when all is in readiness, if you would do us the honors and call in the biggest storm ye've ever called, we'd be in your debt.”

The dwarves scattered to their various tasks, and Mina hand-talked to Kuango, who gently lifted the statue out of the cart and carried it to a huge forge, built in the bottom of a bowl-shaped structure.

It took the rest of the night and all the next morning to gather supplies and light the forge. But at length, a great fire roared and steam hissed as water was let into a huge stone basin above the forge. Copper tubes the size of Gunther's arm were fit into openings in the roof of the forge, joining them to the long, copper pipes extending from the forge into each of the twelve mountains that formed this steep valley. A cart bearing eight smiths' hammers came into sight. Magnus and his fellow smiths reverently lifted the hammers, testing their heft and weight. The handles were ornately carved and looked made of some special, black wood.

Olivar and his apprentice went to work. Gunther didn't understand the mechanics or magic of it, but gradually, billowing, huge thunderheads began to climb into the skies around the mountaintops ringing the valley.

Another man showed up, out of breath as if he'd run a long way, and introduced himself as a stormcaller, also. He joined Olivar and the avarian at their work, and the storms built more quickly thereafter, growing heavy and dark with wind and rain.

“It's lightning we'll be wantin' boys, and plenty of it!” Magnus yelled to the stormcallers over the gusting storm front.

The fires roared and the wind howled, and hail pelted down upon the wooden shingles of the roof over the forge. Torrents of rain began to fall, and gushing gouts of water were channeled off the roof into channels cut into the ground.

Gunther had never seen anything like this storm the callers had summoned. Lightning flashed and thunder crashed continuously, and through it all, the smiths waited grim-faced around the dwarven statue, hammers poised.

All of a sudden, a quick series of flashes erupted from every direction, all the mountaintops taking nearly simultaneous lightning strikes at their summits.

“That's it!” Magnus shouted. “Here it comes!”

The twelve great copper tubes all coming to a point just over the statue's head erupted with a blinding flash of light and heat that all but knocked Gunther off his feet. The twelve channeled bolts of lightning joined into one massive burst that exploded into the storm copper dwarf with a deafening crack and huge shower of sparks.

“Quick, lads!” Magnus cried. All the smiths hammered furiously at the statue, which looked almost molten. It appeared that their blows softened the copper, made it more malleable.

“Consistency's right. Quench it, now!” Magnus yelled. “Hold on, boys!” Each of the smiths grabbed a support pole nearby and hugged it for dear life.

And Gunther saw why as a brace of dwarves above the forge threw open a floodgate, and a great rush of water roared into the forge. Apparently, the statue was too big to lift and carry to a quenching pool, so flooding the entire forge had been the only alternative. An explosion of steam erupted as the water hit the fires of the forge, and all was chaos for upward of a minute as the tsunami swept through.

The dwarves at the floodgate wrestled it closed, and the storm water drained away, leaving the ruined forge behind. The bedraggled smiths let go of the posts, shaking water out of their clothing and beards. Gunther limped forward as quickly as his leg would go to see how the statue had fared.

Except the statue was gone.

In its place, on the ground, a man lay. The spitting image of the statue from before.

“A healer, quick!” Magnus called, kneeling next to the prone man.

Mina raced forward and poured what had to be all the healing she had into the man.

Everyone held their breaths, the anticipation unbearable, the silence complete.

A gasp of returning breath.

A low groan.

He was alive
. They'd done it. The rokken in the statue lived once more as a flesh-and-bone dwarf.

 

CHAPTER

35

Sha'Li waited until Rosana called in Rynn from the last watch of the night to approach the camp, creeping in like a thief after their valuables. Her heart was heavy, her cheek cold. She might have upheld her vows, but she could not live with the person it made her into. She had to face the consequences of her actions.

“There you are!” Raina exclaimed in relief. “We were worried about you!”

Confused, Sha'Li's gaze snapped to Eben, who stared down fixedly at the ground, refusing to look at her. He did tell them what she'd done, didn't he? But as Rosana passed her a bowl and Will moved over on a log to make room for her to sit as if nothing was amiss, she had to assume that Eben had not told them she'd betrayed the party's trust and let Kerryl go.

At least Raina would side with her if it came to an argument.

She'd watched them all night long, remembering moments with each of them, how welcome they'd made her and how good it had felt to have friends. To be part of a group. To have a shared higher purpose.

Tarryn sat down beside her, and Sha'Li said shyly, “For you, I whittled these.” She laid a bow and a dozen arrow shafts at the kindari's feet. “An archer, Eben said you were. Fletching the arrows still need. And tips. Sinew have I not for a pull string, but when next a large creature I hunt, sinew will I harvest for thee.”

The kindari stared at her as if she'd grown a second head.

“What?” she asked gruffly.

Tarryn launched herself at Sha'Li and wrapped her in a horribly embarrassing hug while the others grinned like fools around the fire. “That's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me!” the elf exclaimed.

“Nice, I am not,” she replied sharply.

Eben grunted across the fire but held his tongue. Was it his plan, then, to say nothing to the others of what she'd done? Why would he protect her like that?

Raina grinned at her over Tarryn's shoulder. “Get over it, Sha'Li. You're nicer than any of us.”

The healer's faith in her might as well have been a dagger straight to her heart. Scowling to hide her pain, she scooped out a bowl of the hot cereal Rosana had cooked for them this morning as a celebration for yesterday's victory. It tasted like paste and was about the same consistency.
Bah
. Human food—horrible stuff.

Rosana spoke up. “Cerebus was able to take me to the spirit realm last night to rescue those children's spirits.”

If she'd had eyebrows, she would have lifted them at that announcement.

The gypsy continued, “It made me think. What if Cerebus could help you, Sha'Li?”

Alarmed, she muttered, “To spirit realm I wish not to go.”

“No, I mean with reversing Tarryn's condition.”

“You mean my curse,” the kindari said bitterly. “Call it what it is.”

Raina stood and went over to the unicorn, who was standing quietly to one side of their camp this morning, apparently dozing. She put a hand on his shoulder for a moment. “He says he is weakened at the moment but will do what he can to help you, Sha'Li.”

She frowned. “No healer am I. Know what to do, I do not.” Truly, she had no desire to fool around with rituals and magic and unicorns. But how could she refuse after what she had done last night? She owed them this. She glanced up and caught Eben's accusing stare on her before he turned away.

“I'll help,” Raina volunteered. “Let's do it now before anyone else attacks us. Tarryn, you might want to lie down.”

Frowning, Sha'Li moved over beside Raina and squatted beside the kindari. She felt movement behind her and smelled grass and sunshine. A warm, white presence entered her mind.

“You put your hands on Tarryn thus.” Raina laid her hand on Tarryn's knee, and Sha'Li did the same to Tarryn's shoulder. “Now imagine the curse flowing out of Tarryn.”

“To where will it go?” Sha'Li asked practically.

“Into me,” a foreign voice murmured in her mind. Sha'Li jumped and looked around wildly. The unicorn bobbed its head up and down at her. Kerryl Moonrunner could
keep
his talent for speaking to animals. That was unsettling.

“Like this,” Raina said. Warm, soothing magic flowed into her. Sha'Li needed no healing, but the magic felt nice nonetheless. She concentrated on letting it pass through her and into Tarryn.

“Sense the taint within Tarryn that is not part of her, and focus on pushing it out,” Raina suggested.

That made a certain sense to Sha'Li. She'd always been able to taste when water was polluted and to cleanse it of foreign substances by concentrating upon it. This was similar, but on a much larger scale.

The mark upon her cheek began to burn. At the moment, she wasn't overly fond of the thing, and the pain of it was sharp. Still, out of long habit, she murmured an invocation to Lunimar to help her purify this worthy kindari. It was what her grandfather, a Tribe of the Moon shaman, would have done, and it seemed appropriate now.

A soft nose touched her shoulder, and a third strand of magic joined Raina's spirit magic and her own purifying energy. The strand was green and growing and contained all the nurturing magics of nature. The three energies twined together as they flowed into Tarryn, wrapping around the scout's spirit and gathering up the darkness from it, carrying it away from the kindari.

Time ceased to have meaning as Sha'Li focused her whole being on collecting every last bit of that foreign magic from Tarryn and absorbing it into the braided strands of healing and cleansing. If she was going to do this thing, she was going to do it to the best of her ability.

At last, the process was complete. Only Tarryn remained, and the cord of magical energy was black and fouled, having drawn all of Kerryl's curse into it. Abruptly, the rope snapped away from Tarryn and away from Sha'Li, recoiling hard … into Cerebus.

A great cracking sound behind Sha'Li made her jump and open her eyes. And behind her stood the unicorn, sides heaving, body dripping with sweat, and …
oh no
. Its horn was cracked. A dark, broken line ran the length of the glistening horn.

Raina leaped to her feet. “Cerebus!” She ran to the beast's head and put her hands on the horn, flowing so much healing into the horn that Sha'Li could actually see the magic. For a second, Sha'Li actually thought Raina turned the slightest bit translucent. The healer must have been pouring everything she had into the beast's horn. Which was impressive. She'd seen the human heal
dozens
of wounded people at a time and still have magic left over.

At length, Rosana drew Raina away from the unicorn. “That's enough. You'll kill yourself.”

It was possible for a healer to die from healing?

“Is it enough, Cerebus?” Raina gasped. “I have more.”

Sha'Li heard the voice echo in her head. “Enough, human child. You have saved my horn. With time, it will heal.”

Raina's legs collapsed, and Sha'Li lunged forward in time to catch her and ease her to the ground. Dryly, she commented, “To eat again, I suppose Raina will want.” The magic casters always wanted to eat everything in sight after they used their magic.